The people at the New Zealand Conservative blog also came out in support of the "HIV does not cause AIDS" camp recently. They are a weird lot and remind me why, even before the collapse of my theism, I found my fellow Catholics a disturbing and horrible lot.

Not a bad idea Phillip, in fact, why stop at Crummer Road?. Include Myers park and K' road and we have a winner, bugger the CBD.

I'll be very interested in what the Naval and Family pub, Urge Bar, and Family nightclub will have in store as entertainment for the great mass of rugby fans wandering down K'rd....

Well yes, but it's mostly a shopping street rather than a boozing street. And "closing a street to traffic" is presumably heresy in Auckland, right?

Well, CitRats had an apoplexy over the mere suggestion that a bus lane be run up Queen street, so closing roads would induce a coma for them. Luckily for them the Transport CCO will have that power to close roads next year.

(Fly in the ointment is the appointment of David Hay, current Deputy Mayor, to the Board of the Transport CCO. Bonus for him - he gets his Hay Memorial Highway to Pakuranga along Dominion Rd.)

I presume Aotea Square has already been looked at and dismissed. Would it collapse under the weight? How about the yet-to-be-developed spaces at Britomart?

As I said elsewhere, Aotea Sq will hold 20k, so if someone at council has calculated wrongly I think Aotea Sq would be a good place to have a party.

some people still subscribe to a commodity model of sexuality, where a woman’s precious internal chastity orb is depleted every time she ‘gives it up’ to a new guy. Men, on the other hand, rack up points by claiming these chastity bits when we discard them.

JHC Russell, he actually answered yes to that question- 'Yikes', for that guys wife and daughters.

Julie Fairey, whilst I agree with your sentiment of reading the post and comments over at NZ Conservative, I don't think that Chris Trotter's post- if you're referring to "Bitter Fruits" (http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2010/07/bitter-fruits.html)- is in a different category to Lucia's @ NZConservative. Although the follow-up posts are certainly a bit awkward following Chris' post, I don't think they approach the fringe of ol' Big Boar's at "On Protectors, Predators - and Prey".

There can be a respectable spectrum of opinions in debating abortion ethics and law, I don't think there can ever be a respectable conversation had about the liability of a rape victim for their rape.

At some point Russell, I think it would be great to see Steve Chadwick's proposal discussed on media 7. There is a generation of us in NZ now who have grown up essentially with 'abortion on demand', and many who have probably had their principals challenged by their own life experiences on the matter- I think my generation sees legal abortions as a given, in the same was as decriminalised homosexuality.

Re: Andy Haden, I'm very interested to get the following information:1) how many of his celebrity rugby mates have been charged with rape after having refused to pay a girl money.2) how many of his celebrity rugby mates have been charged with rape (or perhaps anticipated a rape charge), and subsequently instructed their lawyer to pay the complainant off to make it all go away.

(bonus info): whether Mr Haden can spot the difference.

Seriously, I don't want this bullshit "there are people out there...". I want hard numbers. Exactly how many slutty blackmailers are we talking about here? Should there be a public service campaign? WARNING: celebrity sportsmen, for your own safety, STOP HAVING SEX WITH RANDOM GIRLS YOU MEET IN BARS

I see Peter Cresswell has also got in on the act of trying to rehabilitate Haden's comment. Russell's fisking of Cresswell's lack of an argument simply has Cresswell going "Can't we all just get along without getting along?" which is a great example of just how intellectually rigorous the Libertarianz really are.

I see Peter Cresswell has also got in on the act of trying to rehabilitate Haden's comment. Russell's fisking of Cresswell's lack of an argument simply has Cresswell going "Can't we all just get along without getting along?" which is a great example of just how intellectually rigorous the Libertarianz really are.

That is one priceless link - including of course its closing link to this which is beyond any satire mere mortals might dream up.

Sam, the people need a quote from that:

"Paul is the sort of useful idiot Lenin would have loved," said Dr McGrath. "A spineless creature of subhuman intelligence who can only choose between options selected for him by his masters. Ideal fodder for the political ends of John Key and Murray McCully.

"Andy Haden could not be relied on to stick to the script laid out for him by the National government who, as their name suggests, have nationalised the Rugby World Cup and would not hesitate to nationalise the rowing team ahead of the upcoming world championships. Their Labour predecessors were no better, forcing tax victims into funding local millionaires to compete in America's Cup yachting."

Dylan, the only commonality I was proposing between Trotter's post on abortion and Lucia writing about the Haden stuff was that I wasn't reading either of them right now cos I don't want to get any angrier than I already am. Having not read either of them I can't really comment fairly on any comparison between the two, and it wasn't my intention to conflate them, beyond the personal impact reading them might have on me. It is All About Me sometimes after all! ;-)

I am intrigued by the possibility that within me somewhere is an internal chastity orb. I thought part of all this fixation on women having sex was about __discouraging__us from having foreign bodies inside us?

some people still subscribe to a commodity model of sexuality, where a woman’s precious internal chastity orb is depleted every time she ‘gives it up’ to a new guy. Men, on the other hand, rack up points by claiming these chastity bits when we discard them.

I suppose the All Blacks have to score points at the World Cup *somehow*.

I thought part of all this fixation on women having sex was about __discouraging__us from having foreign bodies inside us?

Perhaps the worry is that they will dislodge the Chastity Orb?

(It also boggles the mind how someone can write a sentence involving the words "training [men] to be predators" and not notice how it reduces all men to the level of Dobermans. It's just such a thoroughly depressing view of humanity.)

Strangely apt though in terms of the original protagonists of this debacle....I'd definitely resigned myself to doberman status from a fairly young age. Good on you for getting your hands dirty there Russell, these people need to be flogged senseful.

Strangely apt though in terms of the original protagonists of this debacle....

Yeah, but....shouldn't we be demanding *more* of them? As, you know, human beings? (Except: oh, wait, that's a perspective that involves rapists as the problem, which is one the NZCon people are thoroughly unable to perceive.)

"They could put his aquarium in one of those ugly sheds on the Auckland waterfront. Heaven knows no person in their right mind would want to party inside one of those architectural eyesores."

Anyone else here remember the Hero party in the old Princess wharf before it became a big landlocked ocean liner?

Douglas Wright dance company, huge rope climbing up the walls, lasers (they were still cool back then) and a whole lot of people having a bloody good time. If they could pull something off like that in Shed 10, I might even go.

Yeah, like our entrenched habits of saying "it was just a joke" as Dyan notes or more recently of whining "it's PC gone mad". Or maybe they're talking about Cresswell's blog?

Bully Haden lacks the balls to say what he really believes unless he's surrounded by Deaker's senile support group and safely insulated from accountability by a nice warm tv studio and a cadre of simpering apologists led (if I can use the word) by McCully.